


In the forest singing sorrowless

by Anonymous



Category: The 100 (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-10
Updated: 2016-02-10
Packaged: 2018-05-19 09:54:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5963014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You will follow her, by choice or otherwise. Some things are just inescapable like that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the forest singing sorrowless

**Author's Note:**

> I feel rude for not tagging this with major character death, but what can I say. I'm an asshole. That's warning enough. And please pardon any factual errors.
> 
> Clarke falls in the midst of war, and Lexa thinks she will never be able to forgive.

_‘How very sad!’ said Pippin. ‘How was it that they all died?’  
‘They did not _ die _!’ said Treebeard. ‘I never said_ died _. We lost them. We lost them and cannot find them.’_

          — The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, J.R.R Tolkien

 

When you die the coalition will fracture and break. And it will be because she had loved you too keenly, too intensely, that she feels the loss strongest. She sits for hours on her throne, gazing at delegates and ambassadors fumble with their words, impatiently, and tampering down the desire to simply kill the way you had been killed. She speaks with a permanent snarl, now, and she is more unpleasant than even Anya had been — you simply must laugh at that.

“She is inconsolable,” her advisor murmurs to another, a general, when she refuses to see him, waving him away with a dismissing hand, the other pressed to her brows. Her eyes flutter shut as though in immense pain. And she must be, from an unseen wound that has yet to scab over.

“Ever since the death of —” the advisor halts the general’s grumbling words with a penetrating stare.

“She is only a child. Much has been taken from her.”

The general’s hands reach for the straps of his armour, tightening them indignantly as if to remind: that war waits for no one, not even the great, almighty Commander.

“We need the _commander_ , not a _child_ ,” the general gripes. “Furthermore, she is no stranger to loss.”

The advisor minutely tilts his head to briefly glance at the throne, which she has abandoned for the balcony. “No, but I imagine this one is different.”

There is general discomfort sitting in your stomach where your wound used to be. When you feel for it, your hands are wet, though they do not come away bloody. You stand by her, watching as she watches. Her face is vacant, in a stupor of calm, and exactly the way you remember it. She has taken to wearing war-paint often now (but perhaps she really does wear it often in times of war), and now it has dried and flaking at the edges.

When she hears the giant creaking doors close shut, she says, “I am well attuned to your conversation.”

“Yes,” he replies, and even when she cannot see, he bows his head and hides his hands within his draping sleeves. “I know.”

She nods. The muscles in her neck are jumping. “Do you worry as he worries?” 

He doesn’t approach her, doesn’t care for it. “No.”

This time she does turn, almost theatrically, with her cloak sweeping up a wide arc behind her. You laugh — of course she would be dramatic about it. But your laughter doesn’t quite make it past your throat, perhaps because it had been destroyed before, when you see the look on her face.

The advisor hadn’t even been looking, and he flinches at the change in the air. Imperceptible, akin to a change in the wind, and yet his body cowers at the ugly change in her.

“No?” she repeats.

“No,” he says. “Never before have the Sky people been more committed to the cause than the present. They will want to avenge —” and here he falters, “— the dead.”

The twist of her mouth is mocking. You almost don’t recognise her, with that certain expression on her face. “What are you afraid of? Saying her name?” she laughs, but the sound is drawn out and sharp. “Do you think she will hear you? Do you think she _can_?”

Then she staggers, an explosive pain set off behind her eyes that has her seeing flashes of red, and holds a hand to her forehead, her fingers clutching at her hair. She doesn’t close her eyes, however, and so the image procured of her is frenzied and crazed.

The advisor calls for her, reaching out to steady her but she withdraws, recoiling. A part of her mind is alight as she thinks petulantly, _is it not_ your _hands I want holding me_.

And you, as a ghost, as _her_ ghost, are privy to her thoughts, her mind. You do reach out, laying your hand on her elbow, but you don’t feel warm flesh, as she doesn’t feel you.

“Oh, _Lexa_.”

“I’m sorry,” she says, and it comes out a hushed whisper. Her hand falls to her side, and she straightens. The dying orange light of sunset hits half her gaunt face and everything is left bare and open. Her lips are parted, and her eyes have dulled, but the green in them have remained. “It has been a long day, and I think I will retire to bed early tonight.”

He dips his head in respect. “Of course, commander.”

She turns away from him once more.

He is right, you think, she will win the war. You have no access to his thoughts (but you can see a young boy trail absently behind him, his feet light as they step around the advisor’s cloak; he doesn’t even regard you) but you can see it on his face.

*

In the privacy of the dark, she meticulously undresses. The cloak is the first to go, folded neatly onto a pile next to the bed, and then her shirts, and then she reaches for her sleep shift draped over a chair.

She had asked for a basin of warm water to be brought up, and she washes away the day from her face, flicking the water away and onto the floor. As soon as her face is rid of war-paint she settles at the edge of the bed.

She looks impassively at the overlapping animal furs on the mattress, and you know she sees you lying on your side, curled up and bleary. Sleep-warmed and sweet, even as you scowl at her and swat away her hands and her kisses. Eventually you would fall into laughter, and ultimately you would shift closer just so you could be loved.

Something twitches in her face and her fingers curl into the furs. She promptly banishes the thought with a shaky breath.

She goes to bed, buries herself under the covers and refuses to sleep on your side. You sigh, getting into bed with her. In your current state of existence sleep isn’t a necessity, but you simply follow where her mind goes. But the commander hardly dreams nowadays, and so you would prefer to just lie by her and watch her breathe, the outline of her form touched by moonbeams.

She would never say it aloud — some days she insults herself for even thinking the thought, and it is sadly amusing — but you know she blames you for leaving.

“It is only fitting,” she had said once, _once_ , in a moment of weakness, half-laughing, half-crying, “that you should leave me after I had left you before. And if this is how it must have felt, I am so, terribly sorry.”

You had kneeled before her, and took (or tried to) take her hands from her lap. You remained there as she cried, silently, and then as the sun rose, her tears had dried and she watched the blazing thing. The burning of the skies. She thinks, _you would have loved it._

“I had not meant to leave you, Lex.”

*

You follow her into war (“I will always follow you,” you told her, and she had gripped your hand tightly as if to make certain of that), where she is brave and ruthless. But her mind is sick; now she takes pleasure in killing the ice nation warriors. She dispenses harsh, unduly punishments, and where she can, she carries them out herself, the strict line of her mouth set.

More than once had you tried to stop her, forced a hand upon her forearm or stood between the whip and the ravaged back, but you cannot heal her hurts, you realise.

“I must be in hell,” you say. “This is hell.”

Her merciless front is awe-inspiring to her people, who have suffered in the duration of the war, and it keeps her clans and her alliances in check. You remember, she is a powerful ally.

But it comes with a heavy cost.

“You have to get better,” you tell her, quietly, as your hands probe at her arms.

She drags a hand down her face, smearing black over her eyelids and down the side of her nose (she had not bothered to wash her face that night) and a small cry breaks free of her taut lips.

You know how she wishes to howl at the hideously bloated moon, somehow more bloated on earth than it had been in space, and declare her hurt and suffering, to make it _known_.

But she silences the cry, presses a hand over her mouth, even as her body trembles.

*

She stands amongst the general over an old and creased map on a massive table that seems to be made out of a distorted and cured tree trunk, updated with fresher and starker inks on the shrivelled canvas. You notice there isn’t a representative for the sky people, which makes you wonder if your death really had effectively disintegrated their alliance, or if they had withdrew from the coalition. Your people had never been a trusting, forgiving bunch. There are coloured pebbles — painted black and white — to represent the coalition and the ice nation, and it reminds you so much of a chess game with a long-departed friend.

When you look at the map, you know exactly how the move the pieces into play, which territory to seize.

She appears invested in the discussion, her advisor whispering into her ear and she will either nod in agreement or grimace in opposition.

The boy hides in the folds of the advisor’s robe, tinged blue, and on this occasion, he looks at you, with a mixed expression of fear and curiosity. His hair looks honeyed, matted and clumped, swept sharply to the side.

You blink at him, smiling when his eyes, brown and intelligent, meet yours.

“Hello,” he says, and his voice is small.

“Hello.”

“Who are you?”

“Me? Well. Well, I’m Clarke. Who are you?”

“I — I’m dead,” he says, and he retreats further into the advisor’s robe, gathering the cloth around him like a sort of amour. “Did you come with her?” he points at the commander, solemn and serious.

You nod.

He lets out a breath. “You’re less frightening than the other girl.”

“Other girl?” then it hits you. “Oh.”

He nods. “Parts of her were missing,” he says, timidly.

Your lips press tightly together. The hushed light from the wicks is cast upon the commander’s face, and it makes for a lovely distraction. The room has a high-ceiling, with lit scones along the sand-grafted walls. Discarded scrolls are piled on a long wooden table that runs along the length of the room. It is warm, she has shed her coat for her lighter armour, but a thin sheen of sweat glimmers and catches light at the base of her throat, into the dip between her collarbones.

“Missing?”

“She only has four fingers on one hand, three on the other. She only had one eye, and chunks of her ears are gone. And her head —”

The image doesn’t sit too well with your stomach. But it is more out of pity than anything. “Where did she go?”

He looks sheepish, but he slowly emerges from the advisor’s robe, though tentatively, as he grows more engaged in the conversation. He shrugs. “She left. You have replaced her.”

“Replaced her?”

He nods, again. He gestures to the commander with his chin. “Would you tell me how you did it? How you made the commander really love you?”

“I,” you stutter, looking away for a moment from his expectant eyes. “I don’t know.”

“Oh,” he appears disappointed.

“And what about you? Did you come with the advisor?”

“Yes.”

But before you may anything else, the meeting is adjourned, and the generals and warlords leave the room in a slow trickle, along with the advisor and the little boy, while the commander remains behind to survey the map alone (it seems that she has requested it without you noticing).

You observe how light flickers across her face. But even in the low, heady light, she looks anything but tender. Her face is fierce, grimly determined. Her breathing is uneven and she moves as though she is sporting a wound down her side, stiffly.

Finally, she sets her palms flat onto the sides of the map, and exhales lengthily.

“You would hate me,” she says, and you startle when you realise she is talking to you (well, herself, really), “if you know what I would do. What I am about to do.”

Then she inhales, and hangs her head, squeezing shut her eyes.

Surprisingly, she continues, “You were awful, whenever I called for a discussion with the other clans. You opposed everything I, or the generals, suggested. For a while, I considered requesting for another representative. But you were most helpful, because you pointed out all the flaws in our plans. Even if we loathed you for it.” Here, she sucks in a shuddery breath, her shoulders rippling as if she might cry.

“Truthfully, I don’t know if I want this war to end,” she admits, in a voice ill-befitting of a commander. It wavers.

You linger at her shoulder, wishing to reach out to touch, but also wishing to be spared the disappointment from not being able to _feel_ her.

“Perhaps,” she says, steadying herself. “Perhaps.” She tastes the word on her lips. “Perhaps this is the last war I will ever see as myself.”

“No,” you say softly. “Please don’t say that.”

“That wouldn’t be too horrible, would it?” she says, mostly to herself. But then she laughs breathlessly and shakes her head. “No, but you would hate me for it.”

She considers it for a moment, then adds, “Well that just isn’t fair. I don’t hate you for dying.”

“You kind of do,” you remind her, gently. Of course it goes unheard, lost to the wind.

“Especially when I specifically told you not to.”

You snort.

“But when have you ever listened,” she chuckles, pulling away from the table and bringing her fists to her eyes. “I loved that most about you.”

*

You don’t register what is happening until you’re at the gates, and she is yelling at the guards to permit entry. She appears unfazed when they train their guns onto her, seemingly bored by the tedium of their customs.

“State your purpose!”

“I request an audience with your leader, whoever it may be now.”

Your heart beats (metaphorically, duh) and it clogs your throat, constricting. She thinks, _if they will not let me enter, I will mow down these doors._

“No,” you breathe. And you try to speak to the guards, stupidly, in a moment of unawareness. “Let her in.”

And suddenly you hear a familiar cry. “Let her in!”

The doors wrench open heavily, but only slightly, to permit only one person. The commander dismounts, running a gentle hand down the side of her mare’s neck to comfort it and cease its anxious skittering. To her guards, she nods severely.

And a man comes forward, in a black guard’s jacket that is torn at the shoulders and sleeves, to greet her at the gate. His gait is professional, straightforward, and Spartan in speech. His hair is longer than you last remember it, his beard more unruly, and with more grey hairs this time. But the most drastic change lies in his eyes, they are unfriendly, jaded.

“Commander,” he greets, formally.

“So _you_ are to be Clarke’s replacement,” she says, unkindly, with patent disdain. “Well of course it is you. You bore the brand during the initiation so long ago.”

In truth it had only been about four months. His jaw clenches at the mention of your name, while you can only stare at the lingering woman behind him, another familiar face.

Her hair is cropped short, and she is dark-skinned, and heavily-scarred. There is extensive scarring on her face, down the side of her face, serrated on her chin, and her eyes widen in recognition at the commander, but narrows at you.

“Why is it,” she says, curtly, “that I follow him while you follow my commander?”

Of course. Of course it had been her. You hadn’t seen her, she had been absent from her usual place at the commander’s side, and without her the balance is tilted, now only the advisor stands by the commander’s side.

“Hello, Indra,” you say, smiling. “It seems Marcus Kane really cared for you.”

She regards you, her eyes undoubtedly spotting the ugly splatter of red at your stomach that refuses to dry, and she nods. You notice a similar one at her chest, at her breastbone.

She sighs. “I thought you hardy, Clarke.”

“I could say the same about you.”

But her eyes are kind and entertained. Death is a good look on her.

When he leads the commander into the camp (now Arkadia, you suppose), it is quiet. None of them bother to make small-talk, both without the appetite for it. About the only thing they had in common lately is just death, death and death. You stray away from the commander’s side to find familiar faces, for loved ones, but only return disappointed. Indra watches you with sympathy in her eyes, but she appears mostly relieved at the presence of her commander.

“Where are the people?” you ask.

Indra says, “They are _your_ people.”

“Ironic, isn’t it?” you smile sadly and her grip tightens at her sword. “Here you are, with my people, and there I am, with yours.”

“There is no helping it. The commander loves you dearly. Surely you must know that.”

And you do. You are painfully, acutely aware of it.

You see some of the people, rising out of their tents. Smoke still curls from an extinguished fire in the centre of the camp, with makeshift roast spits, and stacked logs. It is different here, most of the people have ghosts trailing resolutely after them, and you recognise some of them, having fallen alongside them or after.

Eventually, you tire of searching and you ask, “Where is my mother?”

Indra pauses as if to think of an answer and it is strange, you did not think she was one to spare your feelings. She says, firmly, “She lives, if that is what you mean.”

“Is she well?”

“No. She is in mourning. And it is absolutely miserable here, with your people. All of them carry ghosts with them.”

“Does my mother —”

“Yes,” she says. “A man. With hair the colour of yours.”

You swallow, nodding. “Then I really must see her.”

“But he will not talk to me. It appears he has lost his voice. And he is in a horrible way.”

“Being floated will do that to you.”

She says, hastening her steps to match his, “But we cannot do anything.”

“Yes,” you say, agreeing. “We can’t.”

“Then this truly is hell, as you people call it.”

You smile.

*

He has invited her into the dropship, and everything hits you at once. It is overwhelming, all the memories you have stored away into this bloody place. Indra glances over at you, only briefly, brow raised as if in concern.

The commander moves urgently, as though she cannot wait to leave, to have this over and done with, because you can tell it gives her pain. She thinks, repeatedly and constantly, _she was here. she had been here. this was where she had been when she fell from the sky. this was how she came to me._

You can tell memories are playing tricks on her, that she sees you in hidden corners and dark corridors. Indra looks sharply at you when she seems to notice the same thing.

It feels accusatory, somewhat. As though it had been your fault her commander is in such a dire, pathetic state.

And you do apologise, seated across Kane, while the commander paces back and forth while Indra stands leaning against a wall. “I am sorry, Indra. It’s the first time you’ve seen her and yet she is —”

You fall silent and she raises a brow again at you, prompting you to continue. But when you cannot, words fail to spill from your lips, she sighs, and mercifully continues in your place, “She suffers, yes. But she has always suffered. I will not be surprised — in fact, I am not, that she carries ghosts. She always has.”

“There was someone before me.”

She looks directly at you. “Yes.”

The commander discusses the tactics and strategies she is about to employ, the ones agreed upon, and she seems a little closed-off as Kane offers his input. You know she is unused to the words coming from his mouth, though you would have said the same thing. His voice is too deep, too gruff, too unlike yours. But she doesn’t let it show, nodding, accepting.

Indra watches you throughout the entire affair. Try as you may, you cannot discern the reason behind it.

“Why do you look at me like that?” you demand.

“It has been a while since I last saw you,” she confesses. “We were dispatched to different territories.”

Her tone is brusque, but her words are telling. You do not approach her, however, knowing she would not appreciate it. Instead the both of you share this melancholic feeling that passes like a haze.

“I hope you died well,” she says.

“I did,” you say. “She was by my side throughout the entire affair.”

“Good.”

*

The disappointment leaves a sour taste at the back of your mouth as he escorts you to the gate. He doesn’t suggest for the commander to stay, and you are certain she would refuse even if he extends the invitation.

“Thank you,” he says, half-heartedly, as if deciding last-minute to speak.

“Don’t thank me,” she snaps, but it is instinctive; she doesn’t mean it, not really. Still, she is not one to take back her words.

He doesn’t care for her answer, nodding. Indra, at his side, steps forward to lay a hand on your shoulder. You feel it then, warmth you haven’t felt for what seems like so long. The heat bursts through and into you.

“You must be lonely,” you say, all too aware of the impending goodbye. And it will be for a while. The commander has little reason and even less incentive to return to this wretched place.

She laughs. “This is temporary. I do not expect to stay long. Besides, your people carry ghosts like bags.”

“Is there such a thing?”

“Of course. He only feels this loss so greatly now because it is fresh. Once he’s grown to accept it, I will leave his side. I imagine I will be replaced.”

“Is this punishment?” you ask her, hating how childish it sounds. You flinch as soon as the words leave your mouth.

“It is not what I had in mind,” she says, pensively. “Perhaps, it is more…subconscious. You are most alive in the commander’s mind.”

“You mean, once she forgets me, I will disappear?”

She takes one look at the commander, mounting her horse, at the vicious look in her eyes. “Once she learns to accept,” Indra corrects. “One never forgets, not really.”

You mount the horse after the commander, detesting the cold, hollow feeling it brings at every touch. Indra looks gravely at the both of you and she finally says, in all confidence, “I do not think you will ever disappear, Clarke. May we meet again.”

“May we meet again,” you return.

*

She goes to war.

You know she counts the hours, the minutes, the seconds, before she can return to the battlefield. She sleeps deeply, and she does dream this time.

You go to her in her dream. She dreams of a quarry, now drowned with blue water, and there is an expansive blue sky ahead, all blues. Then there is forest, there is green, intersecting the quarry halfway, and you can see the fell trees in the water, submerged and lost. Moss curls limply along crusted rock, a bird whistles in the trees. In a distance you can see the sloping shoulders of hills. Everything is still. She stands at a clearing, along the perimeter of the quarry.

When you stand next to her, she exhales and smiles, dispelling whatever weight she has been carrying, “You’re here.”

“Lexa,” you breathe, and she turns to face you. Your breath catches in your throat. She is without face paint, and she looks so _young_. So strong and so feminine and so much love and affinity openly expressed on her face.

She reaches for your hands, tangling your fingers together and when she presents a wildflower in her other hand, you laugh, swiping it from her and twirling it in your fingers.

She watches you, her eyes infinitely tender, and so mellow in the soft light that stalls between day and night. She leans in and buries her face into your neck, inhaling. “I longed to see you. You don’t know how much I wanted to —”

“I do,” you interrupt, immediately sliding your arms around her. “Dear fucking god, I _know_.”

You hold her, in silence. She does not cry, but her hands hang at her sides, and she simply stands and allows herself to be held. She smells faintly of sandalwood and spices.

Finally, in the waning light, you bring your hands to her hair, feeling the coarse strands and the thick braids. “You’ve been trying so hard, haven’t you?”

She breathes deeply. “I don’t want to go back.”

You laugh through your nose. “We both know you can’t stay.”

“But I missed you. So much.”

“I missed you too.”

Then the dream warps and fades, and the last you remember of it is her heat of her skin, her face in your neck, the murmured words into your skin.

You come into awareness aching and more desperate for her. She swings her legs off the bed, and palms her eyes, regulating her breathing. She thinks, _I should not have gone back to that camp_.

*

You are by her side as she charges into the field, and when she is struck, you are by her side, screaming. She is obviously deaf to it, but this time you are not sure if it has always been that way, or if she is too deep in a bloodlust to notice it at all.

You never forget the population of ghosts on a battlefield, confused, without anchor. War is mass murder.

When she is carried off the field on a makeshift stretcher you think she sees you. Her eyes flutter as she flits in and out of consciousness, but they are fixed on you, and you reassure, beg, yell, plead, fret — all of this, in the span of five minutes and then she is under.

*

Her fever dreams go something like this: she follows you down the cleft in a high steep bank, the day golden and the air thick with pollen. A warm and gentle breeze blows past, rustling the reeds and scattering the faded, fallen leaves. Some of it is swept away down a wound river, the water so clear you can see the grains of sand on the riverbed.

She offers you a hand to aid you, more out of consideration than anything, and you refuse to take it, drawling, albeit while panting: “My hero.”

Her hand retreats and she shrugs. But when your footing slips, only for a moment, she laughs, and the sound carries, eastward with the wind, brought into the fold, into the long grasses.

“I know what you’re going to say,” you tell her, when she stops laughing, which is some time afterward (but what does it matter, time bears little meaning in a stream of consciousness). “And please, for my sake, don’t say it.” Which only makes her burst into laughter again, the sound re-emerging fresh from her throat.

She kisses you, still laughing, and her hands fumble clumsily at your waist. She kisses you awkwardly at first, because time has made it so, then hungrily, then sweetly, little innocent, close-mouthed pecks. She doesn’t part from your lips. It seems breathing is no longer necessary.

“I’ve missed you quite terribly.”

You nod, because when she kissed you she had taken your voice as well. She has become rather adept at theft.

“And I’ve been terrible while you weren’t around,” she admits, contrite. “My people hate me. I think I’m better suited to stay here, with you.”

You touch her cheek softly. “That’s not true. They don’t hate you. You make an excellent commander.”

At this rejection she grows despondent. She sighs. “If I am as good as you say, then why have I led my people into war?”

You worry your lip. “Sometimes it’s unavoidable. Besides, the ice queen is a bitch.”

She laughs. “You’ve used that term on me before. Don’t think I’ve forgotten.”

“Oh no, I _know_ you didn’t forget.”

She grins, and her eyes flutter open. “You’re incorrigible.”

The grin stays on her face even as you move away, stripping. At least in her dreams you are not eternally mortally wounded. It would be distressful to have to explain that incessantly.

“What are you doing?” she asks.

“Swimming.”

“But you don’t know how to swim,” she points out.

“I guess you’ll have to teach me, then,” you say, smiling and batting your lashes over your shoulder. Your voice has lowered to a rough husk.

The effect is immediate and hilarious. She blinks for a moment, but then sputters weak laughter and struggles with the buttons and clasps of her shirt and her pants. You’re waist-deep in the water when she joins you. The water is sun-warmed, and the current is only a playful tugging westwards.

She seizes you, pulling you closer to her so you stand flush and pressed against one another. She is smiling, ever so content. You grip her forearm, over the tattoo.

“Why have you been terrible?” you ask, nudging her nose with yours.

She doesn’t seem to know how to answer, torn. At long last, she says, “You know how I am.”

“Yes,” you agree. You squeeze her hip to concede the point. “You have a horrible temper. Like a spoiled child.”

“Excuse you. Between the both of us, I think it has been decided that you are the spoiled child.”

“Don’t sound so offended you’re the spoiled child.”

She laughs, but it fades. The rushing of the river water is calming, and it fits easily into the spaces of silence the two of you leave behind. “I’m better with you around.”

 _I am around_.

“You’re fine,” you tell her. “You’ll manage.”

“I don’t know how.” Her voice breaks and you hold her closer, tighter.

“This is a dream, isn’t it?” she says. “This is a dream and you’re dead and when I wake up, you’ll still be dead.”

You hush her, kissing her cheek. “You’ll be fine.”

“I’m not ready to wake up.”

“Your people need you.”

“They always have,” she says, and she sounds a little resentful, if at all.

You take her face in your hands, and you look at her, fully, recognising the green-grey of her eyes (green in sunlight, grey in the dark), and you say, firmly, “We _will_ meet again.”

It is a promise. She takes your word for it, and she nods, albeit reluctantly.

*

She wakes up looking for you, asking for you. The healers exchange uneasy looks at her affliction. But when it comes to dawn upon her that you are dead and gone from that world, she removes everyone else from the tent with a bark.

You can see the grisly wound at her side that is hastily stitched together and dressed. She holds an arm over her eyes, gasping, and it occurs to you that she is crying. Her entire body heaves with the effort. She cries unstifled, desperate sobs. Then she lashes out, toppling unlit wicks and water basins and spilling water. And yet no one enters the tent. No one dares to.

You witness her sorrow in the darkened room, trembling with pain of your own.

She wails, but then it breaks off halfway and then she is just silent, turning onto her unhurt side.

No one mentions it afterward.

*

She ultimately meets your mother, who insists on re-dressing her wound. But you know your mother better, you know she means to talk. Your father is gone, no longer lingering at her side, and it is both a disappointment and a relief. But you feel a strong pull to your mother, suddenly craving to be held by her, and you know that if you had not stayed by the commander’s side, you would be by your mother’s.

The commander nods, betraying nothing.

In the privacy of her tent, your mother says, “I know you loved her.”

The commander stiffens, but not because your mother probes at her wound (well she did, but not _that_ one).

“At the very least, I know you felt for her.” Then, your mother chokes up. “I miss her too.”

The commander only stares at your mother, bridged only by your death. Her eyes do not soften as you would have hoped. Yet she still allows your mother to dress her wound.

“I love her,” the commander finally says. It is meant to be stated as a fact, as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. There is no other way to say it.

And that has your mother looking at her, something close to pity in her face. She finishes off with surgical tape to fix the bandage, but doesn’t step away. It is difficult to find someone to share such sorrow, and you know she had begun to think that she is entirely alone in this.

It feels better knowing that you have left not only her in that world. It feels better knowing that she was left behind not by choice, because you would never abandon her or your mother. It feels better knowing that you had not abandoned her alone.

“And I will continue loving her,” the commander says, getting to her feet.

“Of course you will,” your mother says, and like that, the both of them have come to a mutual understanding.

*

Indra still remains. You see her, tagging along behind Kane. When you see her, her face is sour, in a foul mood. You laugh and she glares daggers at you. But your laughter doesn’t halt; it’s not as though she could kill you.

“It seems Kane cares very deeply for you, still,” you say.

Indra sighs, defeated. “It seems whenever he sees one of my kind, he is reminded of me.”

“He feels guilty.”

She grunts.

“My father’s left,” you say.

“Your mother’s learnt to move on from his death, to yours.”

“That’s…progressive.”

She frowns witheringly at you.

“And I don’t see any of my other friends.”

“They’ve been dispatched to other active sites,” she says. “Understandably, they refuse to see the commander.”

“Oh.”

“I, on the other hand, —”

“She’s this way. In her tent.”

*

The commander dreams more often as of late. And she spends most of her time convincing you to let her stay, via kisses or words or otherwise, and you spend most of yours reminding her of the present reality, that it won’t do to have the commander die mid-war.

“I think I don’t want the war to end,” she says, and you’ve heard that before.

You understand. In peacetime there will be so much time on her hands, and in peacetime she will feel your absence more keenly. Because peacetime was a time for reconciliation, for mourning those who have been lost in the war, for rebuilding, moving on, et cetera.

She wanted nothing to do with either of those things.

“I know you would hate that,” she resumes. “I know how you hate war.”

You lean back into a trunk and cross your legs. She has grown bored of skipping rocks across the stagnant waters and now sits before you, tearing out grass like an impatient child.

“I don’t hate you,” you tell her.

“Do you know,” she says, “the average lifespan of a commander?”

You shake your head.

“Twenty-five. I will turn twenty-five in two more summers.”

You turn your face away. Can’t take the imploring look on her face. You’re not used to her begging.

“If you were so intent on dying you would have done it already, way before me, after she died,” you say.

She sighs, says, “You’re right.” She dusts her pants and stands, moving away to dip her feet in the water. Her back is hunched towards you.

There is a prickling within you as you stand to join her, pressing your shoulder to hers. You tell her, “While you can grab breath, you fight. You live, for me, because I could not. You live, for her, because she could not. And if you fall in love again, so what. That’s all right. I’m sure I would have fallen in love with the same person, too, were I you.”

She is silent, contemplative, as her eyes scan the calm surface of the water.

“I won’t love you any less,” you vow. “And neither will she.”

You rest your head on her shoulder and she inhales the air, detecting the faint sharpness of the approaching winter.

*

It comes down to a sort of showdown. The commander stands, wild and wrathful, favouring one leg, blood trickling into her eyes, and the ice queen sits on her glass throne, aged and experienced.

The ice queen taunts her, knows exactly just what buttons to press, explains the tedious process of separating body from head while the host is still alive and screaming.

“Oh, how she _screamed_ ,” the ice queen drawls, smugly. “Nothing like it. And she cried for you, too, _commander_ , so many times. When she died it is without doubt, your name on her lips.”

The commander lunges, steel in her eyes, and the ice queen herself moves to engage in combat. It would have been an amusing sight if she hadn’t been raised and trained since young to kill. Her moves are less fluid, less thorough than the commander’s, but she is just as fast, just as observant as to spot a weakness in the stance, or a flaw somewhere.

But the commander is more determined, more driven, more lustful for blood to be spilled and it is her that saws the ice queen’s head off, while she lies incapacitated and very much alive.

The commander stands, breathing harshly, one hand tangled in the ice queen’s hair, the other still gripping the hilt of her sword, slick with blood. It feels overdue, like an age-long vendetta that has finally ended.

But the vengeance, while extremely delayed, leaves her feeling hollow, nothing at all like the lifting of burdens she had expected. She thinks, _why isn’t this working? why do I not feel better?_

The confusion only serves to further anger her, driving her into a frenzy, throwing herself again, one last time, into the thick of the fight, which has not ceased since their queen fell.

She is screaming in her head, and it hurts you too.

When she collapses from exhaustion later, you place a hand over the crown of her head, “If you do not forgive yourself, no one will.”

*

When you see her later, in a dream, she stands far away from you. She has chosen, subconsciously, to remain in her armour, bloodied and battered, and war-paint. Her hands drip blood into the grass, and there is pain, only because she allows for it to persist, even in her dreams.

There is also blood on your shirt, your mortal wound appearing, and very much real. You remember how it had hurt to die, and when you touch the tender wound, your hands come away red. You fall to the grass.

She goes to you, then, and falls to her knees before you. Her face is dark; you do not recognise her.

“It is done,” she says flatly.

You can’t speak. Your mouth opens, but no words can form. You may only make choking and gagging sounds, and tiny whimpers. You remember — your throat had been crushed. Well that's inconvenient.

“I don’t feel better, Clarke,” she says. She crosses her feet rigidly and sits next to you, in her own pain. “It is frustrating.”

Then she looks over, at where you’ve curled into your wound. “Oh, you’re bleeding.” She presses a hand to the wound and stares at the blood vacantly. “You’re dying, again. Even here, in my dreams, you’re dying.”

“I wanted to die,” she says. Then she pauses, and stares at you. “Would you like to recreate it? When you were dying?”

There had been blood, lots of it, more than you’ve ever seen it. There had also been pain, but that was kissed away by her, who bravely held you as you were dying, even as it must have felt as if she herself were dying too.

“You’re going to be fine,” she said, into your hair. “We’ll go home. You’re going to be just fine.”

You had tried to say something, but only blood rose to your lips when you had tried and she kissed them and shook her head, softly hushing you. Her eyes had been wet, but she had not been crying. She sat back heavily on her haunches, bringing you with her.

And you had died like that, as she held you, whispering in your ear.

“You were always demanding,” she says, in the present. “It is only consistent of you to take a whole lot of me as you left.”

“I don’t know if I want to go back now. The war is over, and all that’s left from here is just…starting over. Be reborn anew. I don’t know if I want that.”

She lies down, next to you. She reaches for your wrist, holding it. “I killed the man who killed you,” she confesses. “I stepped on his throat and tore open his stomach. I didn’t feel horrible for it.”

“Then,” she shuts her eyes. “Then, I brought you home.”

“I buried you. _I_ did. I never went back there. I hate that place. That evil, wretched place.”

“I’m tired, now.”

When she wakes up in reality, the pain disappears. There is celebration all around, and she makes her usual spirited speech, but she rides straight for home and refuses to have anything to do with the commemoration.

“There isn’t anything to celebrate,” she tells her advisor, sharply.

“You have won,” he says, and the little boy behind him peers around his cloak to look at you.

“It felt like a loss.”

*

Indra is gone. People are beginning to accept, to move on, but you remain by the commander’s side. Perhaps it is punishment. Punishment because you had abandoned her, and this is how she chooses to punish you for it.

You would gladly accept, oh, but how she suffers.

*

She is pulled nightly into dreams, but they are more nightmares than anything. The landscape is mostly barren: long stalks of grass are browned and dying, rotting fruit hangs from skeletal frames of trees, even the moon, which permanently remains instead of the sun, is halved and corroded, and they resemble irradiated faces.

The water is polluted. It is slick with oil, black and aflame. Somewhere in the distance a wildfire spreads and burns on the layer of oil. In her nightmares everything is torn asunder and left to burn.

She broods by herself, where you may not touch her. There are mostly dark, shifty figures, warlike and aggressive. They do not speak, but they buzz and murmur and they consume.

You may not speak, either. Your throat is destroyed in her nightmares, the bone broken and unrepairable. And she doesn’t wish to speak to you, doesn’t even regard your existence in her consciousness. She merely sits, at the foot of a tree, her eyes closed and her breathing ragged and rattling. In her nightmares she refuses to be treated, and her wounds hang open and festering, decaying.

You don’t wish to return to her nightmares, because they are hopeless and lost and desolate. But you don’t wish for her to be left alone, and so you stay, even if every time you try to speak you can feel the jutting bone move unnaturally against skin, and blood froths at your lips, as if there hadn’t been already enough blood, and the skin and flesh of your stomach is parted. It feels like dying again, and that just makes sense; in her nightmares you die over and over again. And she cannot help you, there are no reassurances to be made.

“You are dying,” she had said, once, in a moment of rarity. “You are going and I cannot stop you.”

*

At times she goes star-gazing at her balcony, and you know what she sees, what she thinks.

She thinks, _won’t you send her home to me?_

Then the door opens behind her, and a voice echoes in the room: “You started a war, and you won’t even drink with us?”

Your people had stayed, momentarily, to partake in the celebrations, and you know how they enjoy a good party, how they are starved for more than just homemade moonshine. But it is your mother that comes through the doors, still very much sober, with dried blood crusting her clothes.

“I ended it,” the commander replies, not even bothering to spare your mother a cursory glance. Perhaps some things will always remain fresh hurts. “Isn’t that enough.”

“That’s fair.” There’s a pregnant pause. “Are you hurt?”

But the commander says severely, “You didn’t come here to discuss my injuries. What do you want?”

“I just thought, perhaps, you would want to see me, before I leave.”

The words are awkward, formal, outlandish. The commander doesn’t refute your mother’s claim, but she doesn’t confirm it either.

“I thought,” the commander says slowly, softly, “you would have wanted to know how special she was to me. And that one day, we would have asked for your blessings. And you would bear witness to a marital union.”

Your mother is silent. These two women are more alike than they care for. Of course it was your mother’s similarities that had flowed into you, which you had inherited.

A breeze, sweet-scented and warm, carries into the room. It is a playful thing, only toying with the meagre flickers of flame of candlelight.

“I wouldn’t know, however,” the commander says, at last, turning, “if your daughter would have agreed.”

Your mother meets the commander’s eyes, and it is very much like asking you yourself. The commander is uncertain, and it looks as though she is bracing for rejection. But though they are uncertain, they are firm, unwavering.

You move to your mother’s side, your eyes flitting back and forth your mother and the commander. Two women you dearly loved. That is more than some people have to love at all.

“Say yes,” you whisper, wanting to grab your mother’s wrist, and hide your face bashfully behind her shoulder. “Yes. Yes.”

“Clarke,” and it hurts both of them to say your name aloud, “would have said yes.”

Finally, the commander smiles, humbled, a slow warmth spreading inside, regaining feeling in her limbs, in her heart.

The tender moment is shattered by some explosions on the streets below, and your mother startles while the commander only looks mildly amused, unsurprised.

“Your people do have an unhealthy affinity for the explosive,” the commander says.

“Oh, I would know. I patch those kids up,” says your mother, sighing. “I had better take my leave, then. God knows what they’ve done now.”

The commander inclines her head in agreement, and your mother returns the gesture, respectfully, before she leaves.

The commander turns back to the mapping of stars, and for some time in a while, she begins to feel lighter. You take her fingers in your own, and though she does not feel it, she grins heavenward.

*

And someday you will see her again, in the meadows, with her horses. The day would be bright and it will not rain for a time yet, and she is light-hearted. She will look exactly how you had seen her last, barring the blood and the war, lovely and kind. Her gaze is soft, gentle, benevolent. Her hands wind in your golden hair and she will kiss you as though she is starved of affection for years and years.

And she would ask to marry you beneath a canopy of birches, and when the leaves changed and faded she would love you still, her mouth a happy curl.

You would forgive her, and she would forgive you.

And you will say, “Finally. I’ve only been waiting forever. You really took your time.”

“I’m sorry,” she says, and she is smiling, her eyes green and twinkling, “But I’m here now.”

_fin_

 

 _When Summer lies upon the world, and in a noon of gold_  
_Beneath the roof of sleeping leaves the dreams of trees unfold;_  
_When woodland halls are green and cool, and wind is in the_  
_West,_  
_Come back to me! Come back to me, and say my land is best!_

          — The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, J.R.R Tolkien

 


End file.
